Summary

The tool dispatch path in tools/registry.py::ToolRegistry.dispatch() rejects tool calls whose name field has cosmetic variations that are trivially resolvable, producing spurious Unknown tool: X errors and forcing the model into retry loops.

Observed variations from Claude 4.5 / 4.6 / 4.7:

The drift pattern is CamelCase + trailing _tool suffix + mixed case. These are never ambiguous with any real tool name — all registered tools use lowercase snake_case.

Evidence of prevalence

• [FEATURE] Wrong tool name calling from claude-sonnet-4-5 model mastra-ai/mastra#12581 — empirical 44-model study: Claude family fails tool-name conformance at ~30%, other families ≈ 0%.
• anthropic/anthropic-cookbook#50235 — upstream advisory recommending normalization at the dispatch boundary.
• Observed repeatedly in production gateway logs on this installation (openclaw, PID 2473729), especially after a prior dispatch error — the retry often worsens the drift.

Root cause

dispatch() does an exact-match lookup against the registry. A miss returns {"error": "Unknown tool: X"} immediately, with no attempt to normalize.

Proposed fix

Add a _normalize_tool_name() helper and call it as a fallback (only on miss — exact match still wins). Layered drift like TodoTool_tool needs fixpoint iteration:

pass 1: strip _tool suffix -> "TodoTool"
pass 2: camel->snake        -> "todo_tool"
pass 3: strip _tool suffix  -> "todo"        ✓ hit

Bounded MAX_ITER = 4. Logs a warning when normalization recovers a call so drift stays visible.

Safety properties:

• Zero impact on well-formed calls — fallback is never reached when exact match succeeds.
• No false matches — normalization produces lowercase snake_case; collisions with real tool names would already have been exact matches.
• Truly unknown tools still error — e.g. NotARealTool_tool → Unknown tool: NotARealTool_tool (verified).

PR

Will open from JayGwod/hermes-agent:fix/registry-tool-name-normalize.

Live-verified after gateway reload: all 5 drift patterns above route to the correct handler; a control case (NotARealTool_tool) still returns the expected error.